Jim Donaldson: If nothing else, World Cup has provided a needed distraction

How’s your World Cup fever?

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Posted Jul. 8, 2014 @ 1:38 pm

How’s your World Cup fever?

Under control now?

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Is your sporting temperature back down to a normal, 98.6 after the heated epidemic of enthusiasm regarding the U.S. soccer team advancing to the round of 16 in Brazil?

Has your head stopped spinning? Has the delirium subsided?

Hope so, even as the World Cup party goes on.

Without us.

Without the United States.

As it always has.

And always will?

It was great fun while it lasted, but, despite thousands of little kids being driven to practice by their soccer moms year after year for decades now, the U.S. of A. still hasn’t been able to develop enough players good enough to beat Belgium.

Even after bringing in five guys who grew up in Germany, another from Iceland, and another from Norway — meaning 7 of the 23 players on the American roster grew up playing soccer outside the U.S.A.

Belgium has a population of slightly more than 11 million. The United States has a population of almost 314 million. Even after you subtract the real athletes, who play football, basketball, baseball and hockey — and you could throw lacrosse in there, too — shouldn’t there still be enough left over in this Great Land of Ours who play soccer to beat a country the size of Belgium?

Put the shameless shilling and nonstop hype which has helped bring record ratings to ESPN on “mute” for a moment and try to put what the U.S. soccer team did — or, more accurately, did not — accomplish in World Cup 2014 in perspective.

Yes, this U.S. team brought much more attention to soccer than the often-overlooked and frequently ignored sport normally receives.

Just like Olympic sports, which most people pay attention to only every four years, when they suddenly wrap themselves in the flag and become ardent fans for a couple of weeks before forgetting about things like bobsledding, biathlon, badminton and, yes, even ballroom dancing until the next Olympic Games roll around.

This soccer stuff provided some early summer fun when we desperately were looking for some.

The NFL was a month away from opening training camps. The NBA and NHL playoffs were over. And, most exciting of all, the soccer teams in the World Cup were scoring more than the weak-hitting Red Sox in the mediocre American League East.

Watching the World Cup was a pleasant diversion. It was something different. And, yes, it was exciting, as Team USA, to the surprise of many, survived the so-called “Group of Death,” advancing to the “knockout round” of the tournament by virtue of a win over nemesis Ghana and a tie with powerful Portugal.

It was all good.

And the enthusiasm engendered was great.

Younger fans who’d played soccer as kids were all a-twitter — as well as buzzing on Twitter — about the U.S. team. But lots of older, casual fans got caught up in it, too, and the U.S. games became “must-see TV.”

And not just the U.S. games, but games involving the likes of host Brazil, underachieving Spain, creative Argentina, the well-oiled machine that is Germany, and the Netherlands, as well.

It has been a soccer showcase — the best players, the best teams in the world, playing for the world’s most-coveted trophy.

Who wouldn’t want to watch?

But that doesn’t mean America will keep watching.

It doesn’t mean that the United States doesn’t still have a way to go to get to the next level — the highest level — of soccer.

Team USA won just one game, after all.

It’s not very often that sports fans in this country get as excited as they did about a team that went 1-2-1.

A team that didn’t score a goal in regulation time against either Germany or Belgium.

Don’t we see enough of that sort of offensive futility watching the Red Sox?

If not for an absolutely spectacular performance in goal by Tim Howard, the United States might have lost to tiny Belgium by three, four, even five goals.

Sports fans around the globe love teams that win. And, if those teams score a lot while winning, then fans — at least in this country — love them even more.

Which is why the outpouring of affection for a team that won just one of four games while struggling to score against top-caliber teams was refreshing, as well as surprising.

But it’s over now, for us.

For the United States.

It’ll be fun to watch the final on Sunday.

And it’ll be a lot more fun when our Sundays once again will feature real football.